to the other. Such is,
or rather was, when I took possession of it, the Eden of bliss where I
mean to live henceforth alone with the insect. Forty years of desperate
struggle have won it for me.

Eden, I said; and, from the point of view that interests me, the
expression is not out of place. This cursed ground, which no one would
have had at a gift to sow with a pinch of turnip-seed, is an earthly
paradise for the Bees and the Wasps. Its mighty growth of thistles and
centauries draws them all to me from everywhere around. Never, in my
insect-hunting memories, have I seen so large a population at a single
spot; all the trades have made it their rallying-point. Here come
hunters of every kind of game, builders in clay, weavers of cotton
goods, collectors of pieces cut from a leaf or the petals of a flower,
architects in paste-board, plasterers mixing mortar, carpenters boring
wood, miners digging underground galleries, workers handling
goldbeater's skin and many more.

Who is this one? An Anthidium. (A Cotton-bee.--Translator's Note.) She
scrapes the cobwebby stalk of the yellow-flowered centaury and gathers
a ball of wadding which she carries off proudly in the tips of her
mandibles. She will turn it, under ground, into cotton-felt satchels to
hold the store of honey and the egg. And these others, so eager for
plunder? They are Megachiles (Leaf-cutting Bees.--Translator's Note.),
carrying under their bellies their black, white, or blood-red
reaping-brushes. They will leave the thistles to visit the neighbouring
shrubs and there cut from the leaves oval pieces which will be made
into a fit receptacle to contain the harvest. And these, clad in black
velvet? They are Chalicodomae (Mason-bees.--Translator's Note.), who
work with cement and gravel. We could easily find their masonry on the
stones in the harmas. And these, noisily buzzing with a sudden flight?
They are the Anthophorae (a species of Wild Bees.--Translator's Note.),
who live in the old walls and the sunny banks of the neighbourhood.

Now come the Osmiae. One stacks her cells in the spiral staircase of an
empty snail-shell; another, attacking the pith of a dry bit of bramble,
obtains for her grubs a cylindrical lodging and divides it into floors
by means of partition-walls; a third employs the natural channel of a
cut reed; a fourth is a rent-free tenant of the vacant galleries of
some Mason-bee. Here are the Macrocerae and the Eucerae, whose males
are proudly